
Class_ 

Book 



THE PRESIDENT'S DEATH AND ITS LESSONS. 



^ DISCOUE8E 
ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 23d, 1865, 

BEFORE THB 

SECOND UNITARIAN SOCIETY 

OF PHILADELPHIA. 

BT ITS PASTOR, 

WILLIAM L. CHAFFIN. 



J'lliLTSHED BT REQUEST. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, No. 607 8AN80M STREET. 

1865. 



v^V 



THE PRESIDENT'S DEATH AND ITS LESSONS. 



A. DISCOURSE 

ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 23d. 1865, 

BEFORE THE 

SECOND UNITARIAN SOCIETY 

OF PHILADELPHIA, 



lit ITS PASTOR, 



WILLIAM L. CHAFFJX 



PUBLISHED BT BEQUEST. 




PHILADELPHIA: 
KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, No. G07 SANSOM STREET. 

18 05. 



. 



DISCOURSE 



"The Lord is righteous in all His ways "—Psalm 14.5: 17. 

Only in the spirit embodied in some such high 
saying as this, can we find relief for the sorrows and 
anxieties awakened by the sad calamity which fills 
our thoughts to-day. Though we may not clearly see 
the providential meaning of this event, yet we fall 
back upon our faith, in the assurance that it has a 
place in the wise designs of God. 

More than a week has already passed since the 
shocking intelligence first reached us, and we seem 
hardly yet to have realized the terrible fact. But now 
we have present a most solemn witness of it; for all 
that was mortal of our lamented President sleeps with 
us to-day, and our city is hallowed by the presence of 
the honored dead. 

And where could those remains rest with greater 
fitness than in Independence Hall, where the idea of 
universal liberty, to which he was so true, found its 
highest expression and noblest endorsement \ Upon 
the genial face of the great Emancipator look clown 
the pictures of the heroes and statesmen of another 
age. Washington and Jefferson, Franklin, Lafayette 
and their compatriots, imaged on the canvass, greet 
the form of their illustrious descendant, sculptured by 
God in mortal clay. And there stands that old bell, 



more vocal in its silence now than when, in seventy- 
six, it first rang out the glorious declaration of " Lib- 
erty to all," which was only a prophecy, until Abraham 
Lincoln made it a fact. 

Almost a century intervenes between that prophecy 
and its near fulfilment — a century of what varied 
hope and despair, of moral degradation and disaster, 
but now of hopeful promise ! Let those who pass by 
that lifeless form, surrounded by such glorious asso- 
ciations, while the tokens of these two eras— of the 
nation's birth and re-birth — are before them, ijrate- 
fully remember the part he has borne in inaugurating 
our new and better future. 

Now that our feelings are more subdued, we can 
consider this sad event more calmly and reasonably 
than before. • The first shock was so sudden and ter- 
rible as almost to paralyze us ; then wild grief for the 
great loss mingled or alternated with indignant rage at 
the wicked murder; then succeeded Sunday, and with 
one accord men sought the churches, in the natural 
sense of dependence on the King of nations, and seek- 
ing comfort from on high ; and then came the re-birth 
of faith and hope in the acknowledgment of Divine 
Sovereignty, with a disposition to look upon this event 
as in some way necessary to His plans, or, at least, 
sure to be over-ruled for good. And it is with won- 
derful unanimity that men have sought its providen- 
tial reason in the fact that, though the talents and 
disposition of our late Chief Magistrate fitted him in 
a remarkable manner to lead us through the fearfully 
trying time of civil war, yet a more stern and uncom- 
promising sense of justice is necessary for the great 
work that now awaits accomplishment, and for which 






his successor, Andrew Johnson, seems peculiarly 
adapted. For, like the patriarch Abraham, his name- 
sake, who prayed that Sodom might be spared if only 
fifty, thirty, twenty — nay, if but ten righteous men 
should be found therein, so he, through his kindly 
nature, was in danger of letting mercy triumph over 
justice — a course which would have been full of peril 
to the future of our country. If this be so, then, 
harsh as the words may sound, he was removed at the 
best time for his own fame and his country's good. 

But in criticising him on this ground as the Presi- 
dent, do we not render him honor as a man? In say- 
ing he was too kind and forgiving to be rigorously 
just as the Executive officer, do we not bring him 
nearer our own affections X To err is human, but to 
err by too great kindness and good-will is almost di- 
vine. How wonderful it is that though from so many 
quarters he was maligned as a tyrant and the cause of 
terrible disasters, yet never does he degrade the moral 
sublimity of his character by any recrimination. 
While the Rebel Chief vents his impotent rage in 
calumnious insult and abuse, which make his state- 
papers disgraceful tirades, the tone of our leader was 
dignified and manly. 

Have we ever sufficiently realized how much the 
absence of hateful passions on our part, in the conduct 
of the war, may be owing to this very fact I 

Civil war tends always to excite the worst feelings 
and passions, and never were provocations greater 
than we have endured ; yet, under the calm and hu- 
mane leadership of our departed President, we have 
been saved from such an evil spirit. While the South- 
ern people were wrought to frenzied madness by the 



6 

insane appeals of their rulers, we have had an exam- 
ple of calmness and forbearance before us which has 
held our passions in powerful check— and such a cool, 
self-poised and almost passionless man, is most needed 
in a time of such stormy strife and tumult. 

We are not called upon at this hour — when of all 
times our words should be most sacredly true — to ren- 
der to Abraham Lincoln indiscriminate praise. Like 
all men he had his faults and his limitations. There 
were times when he could doubtless have effected 
more by measures different from those he adopted — 
no one perhaps saw that, at last, more plainly, or 
would more freely confess it, than he. To pass 
through such an unprecedented crisis without mis- 
takes would have been a miracle, and our wonder is 
that he made so few. 

But we are to judge of one's character by his cher- 
ished purposes ; and we shall all, I think, agree that 
his country's good was the supreme law of his life and 
action as President. He did his duty as fast as he 
saw it to be his duty, neither hurried into measures of 
whose wisdom he was not certain, nor restrained from 
them when he thought them necessary. We have 
often chafed under and rebuked his slowness, but when 
we remember, my friends, those trying times when 
there were disaster in the field and dangerous divi- 
sions at home, when one false step might have been fa- 
tal, does not that deliberateness seem most essential ? 
Is it not a grand spectacle to see that careful man, 
with such a tremendous responsibility resting upon 
him — aware of many dangers hidden from us — feeling 
his way out of the darkness with such shrewd circum- 
spect ion and conscientious prudence I Why, friends, 



any one can criticise this careful management and call 
it timidity and weakness ; but believing, as I do, that 
there were times of greater national peril than we 
could know — when the storm not only burst upon us 
from without, but a threatening volcano slept beneath 
our feet, and one untimely measure might have undone 
the nation — I feel called upon as never before to ren- 
der my grateful and affectionate homage to President 
Lincoln — who was timid and hesitating and deliberate 
only because of the just fear that an opposite policy 
might have precipitated national ruin. And there 
can be little doubt that, in a government such as ours, 
and more especially at such a crisis, his policy is by 
far the safest and surest. 

And then as to the results. Here we are brought 
on by his administration nearly to the close of this 
gigantic rebellion — with the nation growing in respect 
abroad, with the shouts of victories greeting us from 
every quarter, and our progress in arms only paral- 
leled by the wonderful march of great principles to 
their practical results. And all this in about four 
years! No one can tell now whether this could have 
been accomplished sooner or not ; but as you con- 
template the results, does it not look more like the 
work of forty than of four years % Our first Revolu- 
tion, which seems a mere skirmish compared to this 
civil war, continued seven years — left us impoverished, 
and still a slaveholding people. This great struggle, 
sure to close in much less time, leaves us prosperous, 
and finds us a free people, with a future of vast and 
brilliant promise. 

Let us be thankful for these great results, and not 
withhold our generous praise from the man most con- 



8 

spicuous in it all. His patriotism is undoubted. His 
earnest, constant and prayerful desire to serve his 
country to the utmost cannot be questioned. 

More showy and splendid talents and genius would 
not have been so safe in this trying time as his calm, 
careful wisdom — his rare and unexceptionable integ- 
rity. I challenge any one to go back four years in 
imagination, and, with all the uncertainties of the 
case, to select a man whom he would be willing to 
substitute in place of Abraham Lincoln as President 
of the United States. 

The man whose sudden and cruel death has be- 
reaved the nation's heart has gained the title of the 
Great Emancipator ; for he has been the instrumental 
means of giving liberty to four millions of slaves. 
And this is a title for which any of the great mon- 
archs of the world would gladly exchange all their 
glory ; for it will make his name immortal when theirs 
shall be forgotten. Others have been deliverers of 
their country — Abraham Lincoln is the Emancipator 
of a race. It cannot be claimed, it is true, that he 
was the originator of this movement, nor of the anti- 
slavery spirit which prompted it. That credit must 
be given to others, of whom I will only mention 
Garrison, who deserves immortality as truly as any of 
our countrymen. 

But when it was evident that the people desired and 
would approve the measure, then President Lincoln — 
always a servant of the people, in obedience to demo- 
cratic principle — made it a law ; and in the remem- 
brance of all posterity, especially of those whom he 
made free, his name will be indissolubly connected 
with this grandest of historic movements. 



The extraordinary manifestations of popular feeling 
during the past few days show what a deep and strong 
hold he has upon the national heart. We were all 
conscious, not only of the overwhelming sense of 
public calamity, but of an intimate, personal loss, as 
though a dear father, brother or friend lay dead in 
our sorrowful home. He came near us all. He was 
emphatically one of the people — being born in ordi- 
nary circumstances, and raising himself by persevering- 
effort to various stations of honor and usefulness ; and 
he was one of the people in this higher sense of being 
their true friend, full of warm and genial sympathies. 
He spoke a language they could all understand, some- 
times offending the taste of the fastidious, but always 
speaking to the common sense and common heart. 
He was entirely democratic in his nature — not looking 
down with condescension from his lofty station, but he 
walked and talked with them on their own plane of 
life, and so he has won an unequalled place in their 
affections — a place now made immortal by his mar- 
tyrdom.' 

He is not a character after the heroic style ; but in 
his simple, droll, wise and kindly genius we can recog- 
nize a true and a genuine American style of great- 
ness that will increase with time — the greatness of 
goodness, which stands by itself and needs not to be 
propped up by accidental aids of rank and title and 
military glory. Abraham Lincoln, the honest and the 
true, leaves us a stainless name, unsullied by even one 
blot or suspicion of evil — a name of which America 
may always be proud, and which she will hold in 
everlasting remembrance. 



10 

Dark and trying as these days have been, uncertain 
as we are for the future, there are yet several com- 
forting thoughts by which we may gain strength : 

I. That God exists. Many a time in history has 
the world seemed rushing on to ruin, but the ebbing 
wave soon returned with greater force and volume, 
and under Divine lead the race has been steadily pro- 
gressing. "We have been permitted to see at various 
times that our own seeming disasters have worked out 
needed results, and we have no reason to suppose that 
this saddest event will prove an exception to this be- 
neficent rule. God's purposes cannot be thwarted by 
the hand of an assassin; for he makes the wrath of 
man to praise him, and works out his glorious will 
through the very wickedness that is arrayed against 
him. 

"We trusted much to our late beloved President ; 
but we should be taught that our safety depends not 
on man, but on God. He is not straitened in his 
vi sources, and can give us another good man in the 
place of the one he has taken, if we need him. 

Oh, friends ! I believe that the Lord of Hosts is 
with us, and that He means to teach us that we are 
under the leadings of His providence ; and though 
our mortal eyes look not upon a pillar of cloud by day 
and of fire by night, yet who can review our history 
through this crisis, and at this glorious time behold 
such ;ui opening future, without the glad conviction 
that God now leads us, and, if we are faithful, will 
-fill Lead us as his chosen people? The voice heard 
in this solemn silence declares: "Be still, and know 
thai I am ( rod." 

II. Remember, too, that the nation still lives. W( 



11 

were stronger on the fifteenth of April, after the news 
of this horrible outrage thrilled through the land, than 
we had ever been before. There have been some days 
when we were all one — when family, station, sect, 
paity and race were all forgotten, and we were only 
countrymen and brothers. But never before did we 
so 'truly realize this consciousness of our essential 
oneness as a nation, as when we were so closely united 
by this great and common sorrow. 

This mighty national sentiment on which our safety 
and success depend — more, far more than on any 
single man, however great and good he may be — has 
been revealed with surpassing grandeur by this event. 
Instead of being divided and in danger of disintegra- 
ting, we find that our differences are superficial and 
our unity essential. And where this is true in the 
government of the people, we are safe from any per- 
manent disaster as the result of the loss of one or 
of many men, though at the head of the nation. 

The experience of our people through these sad 
days is a complete vindication of the stability of a 
republican form of government. Democracy has been 
on severest trial during the last four years, and it 
would seem as though God meant to prove to all the 
nations that this experiment of self-government had 
become an accomplished and acknowledged fact. For 
while so sad and sudden a tragedy would be fraught 
with utmost danger to the monarchies of the old 
world, it has created no disturbance in the machinerv 
of our republic ; nor would it have done so had the 
heads of the various departments been assassinated, as 
our beloved Chief Magistrate has been. Our stability 
is not enforced by outward authority, but grows out of 



12 

our inherent unity; and every mad attempt like this 
defeats its object by uniting us better; for we are 
made stronger and more formidable by every such 
national disaster and calamity. There can be no 
cause for fear while we are still a nation true to high 
principles and made one by common sentiments. 

III. And now, again, there is a sadder, but most 
necessary lesson, speaking to us out of this event. 

It is but another illustration of the kind of men 
and manners which are the natural outgrowth and 
fruitage of the system of slavery, in the interest of 
which alone this dreadful rebellion was begun. 

We have hardly yet begun to realize its enormity ; 
but when its secrets arc uncovered, we shall find it a 
very hell of reeking corruption. Possibly, by this 
horrible deed which bows us in sorrow to-day, God 
would further teach us the true character of this 
gigantic crime which for long years has made traffic 
in human flesh, caused perpetual licentiousness and 
barbarity, mocked heaven by groans and tears and 
clanking chains, and which finally flowered out into 
open treason, rending the country in twain, opening 
rivers of fratricidal blood, and darkening every house- 
hold with a common sorrow. And it was but natural 
that it should conduct the war on the same inhuman 
principles ; and accordingly it commits grossest out- 
rages on loyal citizens, forcing men into the ranks at 
the point of the bayonet, seeking to burn our cities 
by the aid of debauched and hardened criminals, 
inaugurating a system of guerilla warfare worthy only 
of highwaymen, and, by systematic and persistent 
starvation and cruelty, committing thousands of mur- 



13 

ders of noble men, which will make the names of 
Libby Prison, Belle Isle, Salisbury and Andersonville 
enduring monuments of what a noble senator, himself 
a victim, has called the " barbarism of slavery."' 

And now this same accursed spirit incarnates itself 
in a ruffian who, with boldest atrocity, assassinates our 
beloved President, the man from whose forbearance it 
had most reason to hope. But, true to His universal 
law, God makes it its own executioner ; for this deed 
is but the most conspicuous and closing act in a drama 
of suicidal madness. The war that was meant to 
save slavery proves its sure destruction, and this shot 
that murders the President pierces its own heart. 

But as the rebel cause was already lost beyond 
recovery, and hence nothing could be gained by this 
act, it becomes a deed of utter malignity, maddened 
to satanic re\ enge and despair by its terrible defeat ; 
but, by employing this murderous assassin to do its 
work, it shows the ruling passion strong, even in its 
death. 

This dreadful atrocity is not to be regarded as the 
conception merely of a few daring men, but is to be 
referred back to the wicked spirit that lias inspired 
all the leaders in this slave-holding rebellion. 

As the evidence accumulates, we find that this was 
but one out of many, or but part of one extensive 
conspiracy. The assassination of the President has 
constantly been premeditated, was once before at- 
tempted, and a letter in the trunk of one of the mur- 
derers shows that this plan was known and counte- 
nanced at Richmond. 

And so, my friends, as we bear these facts in mind, 
remembering that the leading rebels who begun the 



14 

war sanctioned this and other dreadful outrages, 
boasting* that they would effect this assassination, does 
it not plainly appear that we are dealing, not with 
ordinary belligerents and enemies of war, but with a 
conspiracy of traitors and murderers, who seek, by the 
crime of bloody treason, to perpetuate that other 
crime of chattel slavery'? 

Shall not this fact determine us to extirpate, root 
and branch, that atrocious system which has had, and 
so long as it exists will continue to have, the power 
to inflame its minions with such madness and cruelty ? 

Just now we are full of angry indignation against 
the man who committed this foul murder, but let us 
remember, if he aimed at one life, those of whom he 
was the miserable tool have aimed at the life of the 
nation. Murder is one crime alone, but treason is 
the father of many crimes. 

Our sense of justice ought not to be satisfied until 
we go back of this assassin, and back of the greater 
criminals who brought on the war, and utterly destroy 
this one pregnant cause of untold mischief and ruin, 
and render equal justice and common rights to its 
long abused victims. 

IV. And this leads me to say, in conclusion, that 
this sad calamity will not be in vain if it shall arouse 
us to a spirit which will visit upon the authors of our 
national calamities the just punishment of their sins. 
From the start, the government has been too lenient 
and forgiving in its treatment of traitors; and one of 
our great dangers has arisen from our magnanimity ; 
for, unmindful of the future, when elated by victory 
we have been willing to forgive and forget. Not to 
punish them with memorable penalties, is to set a 



15 

premium on treason and bid for a recurrence of rebel- 
lions in the future. It is but right that we should be 
roused to a state of terrible indignation, for our 
uncompromising severity will, in the end, be the 
greatest mercy. 

This we demand, not in any spirit of revenge; for 
were the injury only a personal one, God helping us, 
we would say, "Father, forgive them; they know not 
what they do." 

But we are the vindicators of our country's autho- 
rity, and the guardians of her safety ; and our country 
has a future as well as a present, and a fearful exam- 
ple of the fate of treason should now be made, which 
will secure the future from this danger. If it costs 
nothing to be a traitor, there will be successive con- 
spiracies of ambitious men, who would willingly 
foment discord and war, if only they might sit for a 
while in places of authority, or write their notorious 
fame on the scroll of history in letters of human 
blood. Even now, when we have so much reason to 
hope for better things, the nation's sense of justice is 
outraged at the honor and deference paid to prominent 
rebels, whose defeat has hardly abated their insolence. 
Instead of being allowed their liberty, which they 
will use to defeat justice, they should be held to 
answer for the dreadful crime of unprovoked treason, 
which began by breaking a solemn constitutional oath, 
continued by fearful blood-shed, and ends in a con- 
spicuous assassination, and all this that they might 
have liberty to plant by our side a shameful, slave- 
holding tyranny. 

The least we should demand, is, that all who have 
actively taken part against the government under 



16 

which they were reared, should be forever ineligible 
to office, and deprived of the right of suffrage ; while 
the leading criminals should be banished to perpetual 
exile, or suffer the extreme penalty of the law. 

On some lonely St. Helena, or desolate Siberia, let 
them drag out their miserable clays, solemn warnings 
for the future, living monuments of the fate awaiting 
those who participate in this crime of crimes. 

By the vast sacrifices that have been made, by the 
precious, oh ! the precious blood of our slaughtered 
brothers and husbands, sons and fathers ; by the 
sorrow and destitution of widow and orphan ; and 
now, to-day, over the body of our murdered Presi- 
dent, let us swear together in behalf of justice and 
in the sacred name of our clear native land, to so deal 
with this crime of treason and the sin which prompted 
it, that henceforth we may be secure and free. 

And now, friends, let us render to this great and 
good man, whose body hallows our city to-day, the 
just honor that is his clue. With a single heart he 
has endeavored to serve his country faithfully, and 
thereby has he earned immortal fame. Not the least 
of his great reward, as he looks down upon us from 
on high, is the knowledge of the affection lie has 
inspired in the hearts of his countrymen. Peace to 
his ashes! eternal rest to his soul! May God bless 
and comfort his afflicted family and friends. May 
God sustain and bless this hardly less afflicted nation, 
in whose grateful memory no name will henceforth be 
more honored and loved than that of our dear, 
departed, honest and true President, Abraham Lin- 
coln. 



n 

One more look on that dead face 
Of his murder's ghastly trace ! 
One more kiss, oh, widowed one ! 
Lay your left hand on his brow, 
Lift your right hand up, and vow 
That his work shall yet be done. 

Patience, friends ! The eye of God 
Every path by murder trod 
Watches, lidless, day and night ; 
And the dead man in his shroud, 
And his widow weeping loud, 
And our hearts, are in his sight. 

Every deadly threat that swells 
With the roar of gambling hells, 
Every brutal jest and jeer, 
Every wicked thought and plan 
Of the cruel heart of man, 
Though but whispered, He can hear. 

We in suffering, they in crime, 
Wait the just reward of time, 
Wait the vengeance that is due ; 
Not in vain a heart shall break, 
Not a tear for Freedom's sake 
Falls unheeded : God is true. 

Frozen earth to frozen breast. 
Lay our slain one down to rest : 
Lay him down in hope and faith, 
And above the broken sod, 
Once again, to Freedom's God, 
Pledge ourselves for life or death. 
2 



is 

That the State whose walls we lav, 
In our blood and tears, to-day, 
Shall be free from bonds of shame, 
And our goodly land untrod 
By the feet of Slavery, shod 
With cursing as with shame." 



